Midnight Comforts
by storry-eyed
Summary: Lucy wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, but Peter is there to comfort her. Unfortunately, so are Susan and Edmund. Lucy/Peter.


**A/N: **This is my first Lucy/Peter story in a long time. I like this one because the siblings (Susan at least) get to play a bit of a different roll, instead of just being oblivious. Hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Narnia or the characters and I'm not making any money from this story.

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><p>She's been having bad dreams for <em>ages <em>now, since they came back from Narnia, but usually she just wakes up gasping for breath or tangled in her sheets or sometimes even crying. As far as she knows, her siblings have no idea that she can't sleep, and she wants to keep it that way.

But as the circles under her eyes get darker and darker, and she stays up later and is awake earlier than any of them, they all finally notice, as she knew they eventually would, and they start to worry.

"Lu," says Susan in a far too offhand tone-of-voice, one day when the two of them are alone in the kitchen, "are you okay?"

Lucy jumps and glances up. "Yes, of course, Susan. Why wouldn't I be?"

Her tone is so overly cheerful and forced that even she winces. Susan rolls her eyes. "Because you don't sound like yourself, and you haven't been acting like yourself, and there are _gigantic _circles under your eyes. What's wrong, Lucy? Come on, you can tell me."

"I'm not acting like myself because I'm _not _myself. Not anymore. Not since Narnia," Lucy says pointedly, even though she knows she's hitting below the belt, and walks out of the room, pretending not to notice the shock and hurt on her sister's face. As she'd hoped, Susan doesn't follow her.

But really, it's so much more than the nightmares – it's the wishing and hoping that someday, somehow, they'll get back, and the refusing to believe that they aren't. She's always been the one who believes despite all the odds – and now, more than ever, she can't give it up.

But she's tired, so very very _tired_, and now that they're back in England she doesn't even have someone to hold her at night and keep all the bad things away. Because in Narnia, even though she and Peter had to be secretive and careful and always looking over their shoulders, at least they had had each other. She was a queen and he was a king during the day, but at night they could simply be Lucy and Peter, but that is lost now. And she misses him more than she could ever say.

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><p>It's several months later and she still isn't sleeping, and one night she's lying wrapped up in her sheets, cold as ice despite the fact that it's the middle of summer, and even though she doesn't remember it she must have dropped off because the next thing she remembers is sitting straight up in bed, screaming so loudly that she scares even herself.<p>

The door to her room bursts open and all three of her siblings tumble in, at various stages of undress and sleepiness, but Peter of course is the most awake and the least dressed and he's at her side in an instant.

Over the cries of "Lucy, what's wrong?" and "What's happened? What's going on?" Peter wraps his arms around her and even though they _swore _that nothing would happen between them again, she clings to him, trying in desperation to stop the sobs before they begin.

"Lu, why didn't you tell me you were having bad dreams?" Peter whispers, and the other two quiet as they realize something strange is going on.

"How do _you _know she was having bad dreams? Besides the screaming, of course," Edmund demands, but neither one pays him any attention.

Lucy gulps and tries to answer Peter. "B-because I – I _promised _you I'd stay away, we both did, and I was afraid that if – if I came to you, that we… we would-"

She doesn't get to finish because Peter presses her face into his bare chest and starts to rock her back and forth, and ever though she knows she shouldn't, she pulls herself closer to him and fairly tries to _melt _into his skin.

"I've missed you, Lucy," Peter says quietly, and even though she can practically feelSusan and Edmund's confusion she knows _exactly _what he means.

"So have I," she whispers back, pulling away to look at him. "But we can't, we _can't_, we-"

"We did before," he interrupts her. "Why can't we now?" Lucy shakes her head so hard she gets dizzy, but he keeps talking. "Lucy, if you think I'm going to leave you alone while you're having nightmares and nearly scaring us all to death, you're crazy. I'm _not _leaving you. Not _ever again_."

She stares at him and while she's trying to think of an answer he distracts her by running a hand over her cheek and through her hair and she sighs, eyes closing, and feels a heat she hasn't felt in almost a year shudder through her body. And even though she knows he's cheating she can't bring herself to protest. Besides, she doesn't really mind anyway.

"I'll stay with her," he informs his other siblings. "Go back to bed." Neither of them move and he says sharply, "Everything's fine, go on!"

"Fine, fine, we're going! Keep your hair on." Edmund drags Susan out the door, but before it closes she manages to catch Peter's gaze and her face is absolutely horrified and in that instant Peter realizes that she knows.

He's out of bed in a second, grabbing her by the arm as Edmund groans in annoyance. "Oh, come _on_, Peter, make up your mind! Some of us are tired, you know."

"I already have," he answers firmly, but he's looking at Susan.

"Peter," she says in horror and disbelief, "how _could _you? Our baby sister!"

"She's had a nightmare, Susan, honestly! All I'm going to do is comfort her. I've done that in Narnia too, you know."

"What?" Susan almost shouts, completely ignoring him. "How long has this been going on? I-"

"Lucy needs to sleep. We'll discuss this in the morning," Peter says firmly, ignoring Edmund's confusion and Susan's horrified disbelief, and shuts the door, throwing the lock before anyone can say anything else and heaving a sigh.

"Oh, Peter, you shouldn't have," Lucy says, torn between being afraid, amused, and relieved, because this has been hidden for far too long. "What will they say?"

He crosses back to the bed and crawls in beside his love, brushing her hair back from her face again. "What can they say? It doesn't matter to me anymore. I need you, Lucy. I love you more than anything else in the world." He hesitates, and adds, "But I'll go if you want me to." Lucy answers _that_ by clutching him even more tightly and pressing her face against his chest.

"I can't sleep without you," she confides, voice barely above a whisper in the darkness. "Every night I wake up from nightmares. I can't… I don't think I can do this anymore."

"Tell me about them," he coaxes, hands warm on her sides. "What did you dream about?"

"I don't really remember. I don't want to talk about it, anyway," she answers, and for a second he's confused because it almost sounds like she's _smiling _in the darkness as she snuggles up to his warm body, and that doesn't make any sense. "Make me forget instead."

And then he grins back, because that was what one or the other of them said almost every night so long ago after hard days or bad dreams or just as a long-standing inside joke, and then his lips are on hers and she's almost crying with joy. And somehow it doesn't matter anymore, the hurt and loneliness and worry and pain, because they are together again, and the truth is, the only thing they really need to survive is each other.

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><p><strong>AN: **Please leave a review!

FL7


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